Truth in Packaging

At the grocery store, we buy food that we canâ€™t see all the time. Oh, thereâ€™s a picture on the box or the tin, of course â€” we all know what corn flakes or green beans or pork brains in gravy look like, and that’s more or less what’s inside.

But we treat our diecast hobby very differently. For many small-scale collectors, the packaging, whether blister, box or acrylic case, is part of the collecting. Packaging is not only part of the display, it’s protection for whatâ€™s inside. As many people as there are who tear the packaging and discard it to get at the prized toy inside, there are just as many who keep things in pristine shape, even going so far as to protect the packaging with more packaging. Matchbox did this initially, of course, but the boxes were never shrink-wrapped â€” you could always inspect what was inside before purchase to make sure you liked it.

And so the notion of a blind diecast toy purchase seems a little alien to the American collector. In the States, Hot Wheels has been doing this for a couple of years now: the much-maligned â€œmystery carsâ€ that feature a black blister bubble so that what’s inside is, indeed, a mystery. The cars inside are all exclusively painted â€” there are even variations of some, and a couple of new models we haven’t seen before creep in now and again. Yet when we visit our local big-box stores, weâ€™d say about half of the mystery blisters are torn open at the corner, and left for someone else when the car inside isnâ€™t to their liking. The grumbling on message boards has subsided, probably because itâ€™s not a new phenomenon anymore. I canâ€™t imagine the shrink rates on these. Yet Mattel has done them for a couple of seasons, and doesnâ€™t seem likely to stop.

Meanwhile, in Japan, the blind box concept is a lot more accepted. Kyosho has done this with their Minicar Collection series for years now â€” ten new castings, in a generic picture box specific to the series but not the car inside, all go on sale simultaneously. The box is sealed â€” the end flaps are glued shut. Thereâ€™s a pull tab on top, and itâ€™s difficult to peek inside without obviously ruining the box. Others have followed suit: Konami used the blind-box system when they were doing smaller cars, Doyusha and their kei-car series, and more recently Aoshima have gotten into the game with the Gra-Chan and Abunai Deka series.

And we have to wonder why this is. Is it the difference between big-box stores, with their indifferently attended aisles, and a smaller hobby shop with an eagle-eyed owner keeping tabs? Is it a cultural difference â€” the Japanese more willing to accept the mystery of whatâ€™s inside, and the Americans enforcing their customer-is-always-right-even-if-Iâ€™m-not-buying rights to see the merchandise before making a choice? Who can tell? All we know is, it doesn’t seem to be stopping anytime soon.

(This post originally appeared in the June 18, 2009, issue of the Hemmings eWeekly Newsletter.)